More beating with the Clue-By-Oar

[kippurbird]

This one inspired by a discussion on Antishturgal about Todd McCaffery's book DragonsBlood.


"Are you sure you want to do this?" Loranna asked her gold dragon, holding the syringe.

Yes she said.

Taking a deep breath, Loranna placed the needle to her dragon's skin. Just as she was about to inject the unknown mixture into the dragon, something whacked her on the head, sending her reeling to the ground. Looking up she saw a man holding what looked to be an oar in a threatening manner. He had two fire lizard's perched on his shoulders, a young looking green and an older brown.

"Bad Loranna, no cookie," he said, shaking a finger at her.

"What do you mean? I'm trying to save the dragons!"

"By injecting your dragon with a potentially deadly substance? Hah! No real rider would ever take that risk."

She gaped at him.

He continued on. "Your dragon is supposed to be the most important thing in your entire world. You live for your dragon. You love your dragon above all else, be it family or friends. Your dragon is a part of your soul. You would willingly rip out part of your soul? What sort of monster are you?"

"I'm not a monster!" she protested.

The oar hit her in the head again. "You were about to maybe kill a part of your soul. The thing that should mean more to you than life itself. This is a time for you to be selfish, not selfless. Stop sacrificing yourself for the rest of the world and think about your dragon for once." He waggled the oar at her. "Now, I'm going to follow you around until you stop being stupid. And every time you are about to do something idiotic, I'll hit you with my oar. Do you understand?"

Numbly, she nodded yes.

"Excellent." And then he stomped on the syringe, breaking it. "Now, lets get to it."

Comments

[lccorp2.livejournal.com]

Which thread on the forums was this from?

When I was 12, I used to like Pern. I got every single damn book I could, and read them over and over again and squeed every time I did.

Two years later, I picked one up and went "WTF"?

Personally though, as a dracophile these things piss me off. Still believe warcraft dragons are some of the best ones I've seen so far, with exception of Neltharion.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

It was on the LJ, the one where I posted up the motivational posters.

I rather enjoy the Pern series but I think it went down hill after the Masterharper of Pern. It's a different sort of take on dragons because they're not the mythological sort but instead aliens that sort of look like dragons.

What are the warcraft dragons?

[lccorp2.livejournal.com]

http://www.wowwiki.com/Dragon

From there, happy browsing.

Essentially, I like them because they're no one's pet, hug toy or emotional tampon like Saphira a Pern dragon is. They have their own wants, desires, hobbies, essentially everything fully-fleshed out characters should have, unlike Saph, who cannot exist apart from Eragoner. She is only defined in terms of and by Eragoner and as such pretty much a shell and and shadow of him. Humans riding them? Faugh. Night Elves in trouble? Go handle it yourself, unless there's something in it for us.

Saphira could have been *very* interesting if she'd a personality approaching Alexstraza's, especially with the Ergy behaves.

The Pern dragons are little better in terms of personality, and Mccaffrey wrote herself into a rut when she got rid of Thread and started pulling new powers such as telekinesis out of the dragons' asses. It's too sappy. Too...perfect. Only Ramoth, Menementh and Canth struck me as having vague characters. Ruth was essentially Jaxom's emotional tampon, mark that Jaxom was SPESHUL and beater-up-of-EVIL-antagonists.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Those look like the D&D dragons. Which are also very cool.

Yes, but at least they grow as their riders grow. And Ruth was annoying.

[christinaathena.livejournal.com]

Masterharper bugged me for its blatant contradictions. Robinton studies the Charter in MasterHarper, and yet, when AIVAS talked about the Charter, no one knew what it was! The healers who delivered Robinton mentioned how the ancients could distinguish blood types, but they hadn't had the technology for over 2 millennia! Why would they bother remembering, and teaching, something useless like that? "There are four types of blood, but we can't distinguish them anymore" "So, why bother learning about them?" "Don't question me! Just learn it!"

Robinton also seemed rather Gary Stu-ish in that book.